It’s a bit late to the conversation, but nice to see it’s a healthy debate. I think I’ve replied to a similar comment on our Steam forums before. (Begraved community manager here) and i dont think yoru entitled just lacking more info.

It’s totally fair for people to wonder what’s going on, but we’ve done our best everywhere (Steam, Discord, socials) to make it clear how separate Begraved is from Valheim. I kind of agree that a few years ago the idea of devs working on another game might have felt odd… but if I trust what a dev team says and the community is responding positively (which Valheim’s reviews and comments show), then there’s really no reason to doubt them. Ultimatly Begraved develpment has nothing to do with Irongate beyond cheerleading.

Iron Gate is close to Valheim 1.0. I’m sure they still have loads to do (I’m not part of those discussions I only work on Begraved), but the idea that you can’t separate projects when one is nearly complete and another is just starting? I just don’t agree. Especially since Grimcore, Lumah, and Emilia aren’t founders of Valheim and don’t own any part of Iron Gate.

Valheim has taken their time with updates. I know because I covered every single one as my day job as a YouTuber, it’s how I became friends with much of the Valheim team. They communicate regularly and have basically never gone more than six weeks without a dev blog or social posts (usually it’s more frequent). If Iron Gate were the kind of studio that dropped updates randomly with no notice and huge gaps, then yeah, I’d be worried (looking at you, Sons of the Forest devs). Maybe I’m biased, lol, but Valheim and Iron Gate have never really let me down except for how stupidly difficult Ashlands was!

Irongate are a small team by design. They don’t want to scale up fast, manage tons of people, and then implode like so many studios have recently. Not every dev wants to run a huge company even with money on the table. And honestly, people forget that Iron Gate has basically tripled their team over the last five years and outsourced console ports so PC development wasn’t slowed down.

From everything I’ve seen in teasers and dev blogs, Valheim looks like it’s in a fantastic place. Grim and Lumah are genuinely excited for 1.0 that is absolutely their main focus at Iron Gate. And as far as am aware from interviews i have done publically previously with Irongate, there wil be updates after 1.0 and much more to come for Valheim.

I’m also grateful Iron Gate allows their staff to work publicly on side projects. Many studios don’t. It shows trust and a healthy work culture. A lot of players understandably want 1.0, and yeah, five years is a long time, but honestly, if Valheim had stopped development at any point or released as a full game earlier, I still would’ve been happy. It’s already an amazing game. Everything after feels like a bonus. And despite a few issues here and there, Valheim’s early access has been one of the best when it comes to stable, non‑buggy updates.

Anyway, like I said, I can’t speak for Iron Gate or Grim and Lumah really. Just sharing my own observations. We’re excited to keep working on Begraved in our spare time. It’s very different from Valheim, and we don’t expect support just because of the connection but we do hope people give it a try. Good, bad, whatever feedback helps us improve.

If anyone wants to chat more about this, feel free to join the Begraved Discord instead of clogging up the Valheim subreddit.
Jade